Any Other Name

June 30, 2014
This action-packed new Walt Longmire adventure has the heroic high-plains sheriff investigating a fellow lawman’s suicide. This requires looking into the late detective’s last case, a cold one involving three county women who went missing some time ago. The trail leads him to Deadwood and the Black Hills of South Dakota. There’s a shoot-out in a blinding snowfall that amidst a large herd of stampeding buffalo, an episode in which two trains race to avoid a head-on collision, and some breathlessly suspenseful moments with Longmire about to be crushed by thousands of pounds of coal. Guidall’s at his avuncular best as Longmire, the novel’s wryly self-deprecating narrator. He also provides an appropriately gravelly croak for the sheriff’s hard-drinking retired boss, Lucian Connally, a deep native American accent for crony Henry Standing Bear, and appropriate assorted masculine voices for the male-heavy cast. He finds a little room in his larynx to squeak out a few respectable female voices, too, leading with undersheriff Vic Moretti. It’s a fast, occasionally funny, non-stop audio thrill ride. A Viking hardcover.

Listeners have been lucky--George Guidall has delivered all the installments in Johnson's Walt Longmire series. When the Wyoming sheriff is called in to investigate the suicide of cold case reviewer Gerald Holman, he ends up on the trail of three missing women. Time is against him (he must get to his daughter's side for the birth of his first grandchild) as are the elements (deep snowfall) and even a herd of buffalo--and that doesn't include all the people who are shooting at him. The regulars from previous books are all here--Dog, Vic, Henry Running Bear, and Lucian--and Guidall is completely comfortable with all of their voices. Series followers will greet them as old friends, but new listeners may be better off starting with earlier titles as Johnson doesn't waste words recapping who's who. C.A.T. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine